Agricultural activity such as seeding or harvesting is commonly undertaken using selected implements and driving or pulling such implements across the land in a sequence of generally parallel rows, with only modest overlap dictated primarily by the implement itself. It is obvious that the most optimized and beneficial situation is one in which the land can be farmed in a series of straight, uninterrupted rows, back and forth from one end of the field to the other as one works across the field. No wasted implement movement is necessary, and no energy or time is therefore wasted.
However, it is well known in the art of production from agricultural land that physical obstacles and obstructions are common and that the presence of such can negatively impact production activities. For example, natural obstacles such as water bodies can block a farmer's ability to move the selected implement in straight, uninterrupted rows, instead forcing the farmer to redirect the implement around the obstacle and thereby introduce inefficiencies and potential waste of time and energy resources, such as due to going over the same patch of land two or more times as you work around the obstacle from different angles. It can be challenging to determine a travel path for the selected implement that covers the land as efficiently as possible so as to reduce resource waste.
In addition, man-made obstacles are increasingly making an impact on agricultural production. Hydrocarbon production and pipeline facilities, power and communication utility infrastructure, and various other constructed obstacles and obstructions obviously impact the ability to produce from the land that is being taken up, but with the added presence of access roads, berms and the like there is a heightened impact on the ability to efficiently farm the remaining land, and the negative production impact is not limited to simply the exact patch of land that has been removed from agricultural use. As is the case with natural obstacles, redundant implement travel can result from the irregular remaining land that must be acted upon, with the resultant resource waste.
While producers may attempt, with varying degrees of success, to determine an optimized way to farm the remaining land in the now-disturbed field, it is a challenging task that commonly results in a less-than-optimal approach. The results are often unsatisfactory, and efforts to compensate farmers for lost production are hampered by uncertainty around the quantum of loss.
What is needed is a method for assessing the impact of an obstacle on agricultural activities and determining a way to optimize production.